by Otto Penzler
The prostitutes settled this area with the miners. Only the former remain in business. The only other trace of the miners are the wild burros that roam the town like dust-shrouded ghosts. Mack says that if some people get their way and Angel’s is closed, the town will suffer badly, and it’s probably true. The Beatty Chamber of Commerce is one of the brothel’s greatest boosters.
Mack wears thick-soled Adidas tennis shoes with ankle socks and a powder-blue cardigan, and as he rambles on in his puttering unpunctuated way, every so often his eyes get flirty, like he’s going to share something extremely funny or something deep and meaningful, but each time he tries to address the sex-death continuum, or answer my timid, oblique questions to that end, he veers into the sententious whey of condolence cards.
The first time I called he answered from his shower and let me know, over vigorous lathering, that his brothel had been suspended because of a sting coming out of a conspiracy involving the sheriff, a rival brothel owner, a former madam, and maybe even the assistant DA; that he was going to sue the shit out of Nye County for violating his civil rights; that he took Viagra; that he and his wife were swingers; and that when I came to visit he would put me up in the Fantasy Bungalow. Most of the drive he talked about which swinging magazines are best for meeting other swingers and how since Angel was so much younger and prettier than he, she got more dates than he did, but by the way he told me this, I was led to believe that it was probably the other way around, that he was the Lothario, something later confirmed unenthusiastically by the girls who make up Angel’s staff. Despite his candor about his sex life, the circumstances surrounding his abrupt exit from the funeral trade remain hazy. There is ample stuff for nightmares, if you believe all the accusations: The matter of a missing corpse. Bodies buried in the wrong graves. Bodies exhumed on the sly. Bodies cremated in parties of two. Between 1992 and 1994 alone, eighteen complaints were filed against Moore with the Oregon Cemetery and Mortuary Board. But, thanks to the state’s confidentiality laws, the board’s investigative records are sealed, and I’m left without a full grasp of the mystery behind the man with whom I’m now zooming into the heart of nowhere.
Mack started out selling headstones to put himself through Bible college, but when Oregon cemeteries colluded to require that markers be purchased directly from them, driving out the independent monument dealers, he was nearly put out of business. Fighting mad, Mack became a spectacle, getting dragged out of more than one cemetery in handcuffs for barging in with wheelbarrow and spade to plant a rebel headstone. Fourteen years, three trials, and three appeals after he filed a lawsuit against the cemeteries in 1969, the exclusive installation requirement was ruled a violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; Mack took over four of the defendants’ cemeteries—financially weakened by the judgment—built more funeral homes, and began his necropolitan reign over Lane County. He promptly made new enemies of rival funeral directors, who bristled at his aggressive salesmanship—full-page color ads of caskets, coupons, raffles, cut-rate burials—ploys, they felt, more suitable for selling box springs. One Christmas he advertised a special “Holiday Memorial Service,” promising a special appearance by Santa Claus, who, “in person, will tell how he remembers his wife who died of cancer.”
Soon after Angel was hired as a janitor (she quickly worked her way up to hairdresser, and, according to Mack, did a lovely job with the women’s hair), her youngest son was killed in a motorbike accident. Mack embalmed the boy. Not a year later, Angel’s husband died. Mack did that funeral, too. Mack’s wife and business partner, Eva, grew suspicious of his relationship with his widowed employee, but he denied any hanky-panky: “I never got involved with any woman that I’d served as a funeral director. But it was not because I didn’t have the chance.” After Eva divorced Mack and they divided the properties—making them, in essence, competitors—he tacked an addition onto one of his parlors, rechristened it Celestial Funeral Home and Wedding Chapel, and invited the entire town to his and Angel’s wedding. Because of her tragic losses, Mack says, Angel made an excellent funeral professional. It is the same compassion for human frailty, Mack says, that’s made her such a damn good prostitute—but that’s rushing ahead.
The odd rivalry with Eva came to a head, gruesomely, in late August 1993, when a man died who had prearranged for his funeral at Chapel of Memories (owned by Eva) but who had bought a cemetery plot at Springfield Memorial Gardens (owned by Mack). His body was taken to Eva’s. The man’s stepson went to Mack’s, understandably confused. Mack, with mattress-salesman finesse, persuaded the stepson that since his father was going to be buried at Mack’s cemetery anyway, it might be easier, less grief, not to mention cheaper, because, well, Mack was prepared to give him a great deal, if he just let Mack do the burial and the funeral. All he’d have to do is sign the transfer and Mack would go over to Eva’s and get his stepdaddy. The stepson was persuaded. Unfortunately for Mack, Eva had dumped the body in the casket, wearing nothing but diapers, covered in its own postmortem foulness. “We worked on that damn casket for hours trying to get the damn stink out,” Mack says. Some time during the mayhem, no doubt perturbed, probably thinking that his wife had done this to him on purpose—“she did dirty”—Mack took color photos of the soiled dead man and showed them to the stepson, suggesting he file a complaint against Eva. The stepson was not pleased, and the family took both Moores to court for $7 million. Eva was eventually dropped from the suit, and Mack settled for $21,000. By this point, however, the mortuary board was fed up and proposed suspending Mack’s license for illegally soliciting bodies from a rival funeral home. This was, after all, not the first time.
Then Angel’s eldest son, Jesse, died from drug abuse. The boy and his father had allegedly argued about who had the worse kidneys; it’s not clear that the father won by dying first, since Jesse died just a week short of his thirtieth birthday. For Angel, it was a world-ending blow.
Given their troubles, leaving was an easy decision. In October 1995, Mack sold to a corporate funeral home, and by March 1996 he and Angel had moved to Vegas. Then they bought the brothel, and Angel, vanquished by grief, registered as a legal prostitute.
Mack has since found new loopholes to finger, and the Nevada Brothel Owners Association has castigated him for jeopardizing an industry that likes to keep as low a profile as the funeral trade. The director of the association, George Flint, says that Mack has “turned what is a fairly halfway respected industry into a kind of farce.” Angel’s Ladies was busted in the spring of 1999 after sending their blondest girl, Cindi, to a motel when a cop, posing as a trick, called for room service. (Prostitution is only legal in Nevada inside a licensed brothel.) It took three calls for the cop to persuade the madam, Wanda Towns, but Wanda and her husband, Clint, who works as a security guard at Angel’s Ladies and who drove Cindi to the motel, were arrested and convicted with Cindi for attempting to solicit an illegal outcall. Mack argues that Cindi was just going to “dance” for the man, that it was just an “escort” date, a distinction not made by the Nye County brothel ordinance. A month later the county sheriff’s office simultaneously raided the brothel and the Moores’ Vegas home. Evidence showed a history of outcalls, and the county commissioners shut down the brothel for two weeks, but an appeals judge later ruled entrapment, reversed the convictions, and ordered the Moores’ belongings returned. Still, a gross misdemeanor charge of conspiracy to engage in illegal prostitution looms over the Townses and Cindi, pending a possible settlement with the county. But with Mack blaming everyone for being part of a conspiracy and threatening to sue the county for violating his civil rights (holding Angel hostage, depriving Clint, who has asbestosis, of his oxygen, refusing to return important personal documents), and the county dredging up new pandering charges (trafficking girls to Vegas), the fight will likely drag on until both sides run out of steam. On the other hand, if Mack makes good on his threat to sue the county and wins, he may expand his business. There’s a vacant building across from the Burro Inn and Casi
no that he’s thinking about buying and turning into a funeral parlor.
Mack walks the line of the law as deftly as he walks the line between grief and lust. How very blurry that line is in a free-market culture that survives on the myopic propaganda of manufactured need, in which need is predicated on fear of loss, fear of not having; in which images of grief are routinely brought into focus as images of desire. Between grief and nothing, nothing sells better than grief. Except maybe pussy.
We pull around the side of the brothel, a compound of linked trailers painted antacid pink. Electric angels dance over the front porch of the double-wide. “That’s Shanda,” Mack says before we get out of the car. “She is a bubbling-over girl. So is Cindi. Those two girls will kill you off.” Shanda, in a bowler and a pajama top unbuttoned to the navel, is ankle deep in cats; she ministers to one with an eye-dropper. Thirty or forty surround her like pigeons. She drops the kitten and greets me with a chipper Texan drawl. Two litters of the feral cats were born this week; their eyes are weepy and shuttered. Shanda helps Mack and me unload my car. We can’t help but toe mewling cats out of our path to the brothel.
Dinner is already on the table, waiting (Mack called from twenty miles back to let them know to set an extra plate for me). Wanda takes off an oven mitt to greet me and then runs to the kitchen for a last-minute dish. Mack sits at the head of the table; at the other end sits Clint Towns, who watches the news, an oxygen tube strapped under his nose. Cindi is a jittery blond in a red leather jacket. Diane tells me that if I want a good story then I should ask her about the time she and her daughter got lost in the Sahara and her daughter ran out of Kool-Aid and they were saved by a mysterious being.
On the counter is a row of egg timers, each with a girl’s name. Angel’s has a license for five girls but employs eight, so they work in shifts. Angel, out of compassion and pity, has been known to take on men that the other girls refuse, and for less money. The dining room doubles as the madam’s office, with phones, a copier, and a status board on the wall. The board says in green Magic Marker that Coco, Cajun, Dizyre, and Mia are “off property.” A joke traffic sign by the door says, “Parking for Lvers Only, All Others Will Be Towed.” On the wall between the TV room and dining room is an authentic Old West wood placard:
Why Walk Around Half Dead When
We Can Bury You
For Only $22.00
We Use Choice Pine Coffins (Select Pine from Mexico)
Our New Burial Coach-Finest in the
Arizona Territory
TOMBSTONE UNDERTAKERS
Mack lets me know that they pray before meals. He takes my hand, and I take Shanda’s, to my left. During his prayer, Mack caresses my hand with his thumb, not in a kinky way but in the same way my mother does during her blessing over Thanksgiving dinner, describing the same rosette with her thumb. Unlike most Nevada whorehouses, Angel’s Ladies does not have a bar. Mack does not drink or smoke or gamble. He and Angel are born-again, and Angel’s is the closest thing anyone is going to get to a Christian brothel. They like to say that they “live the example.” Why not? The ancients lived happily for millennia with the paradox of temple prostitution. A timer goes off and we are presently joined by Nikki, wearing a peignoir, looking freshly showered. Wanda asks if her “guy” doesn’t want to join us, and she murmurs that no, he does not. The other women look her over and then pass the casserole.
Because we are allegedly across the street from Area 51, I broach the subject of UFOs. Instant hit. Everyone at the table, except Mack, has had a sighting. Twice since she’s been here, Wanda has seen lights above the ridge over Area 51. The second time was with a trick. He’d just buzzed and she was opening the front door. It was a brilliant yellow flare, almost gold. Clint, who worked for the government, has seen stuff, too. Diane has had the most sightings. She is writing a book, she says, called The Hooker and the Aliens. Mack gets irritated with the bunkum and pulls the dessert, a pan of chocolate-frosted cake, his way. He cuts two bricks and serves me one. He takes a bite and then asks, sternly, “You like yella cake?” I say that yeah, I like yella cake. “Me too,” he says. Then there’s a buzz and the girls scurry. Mack excuses himself.
The girls keep out of sight till called to the front parlor for the lineup. Peeking around the corner, I can’t see much more than the visitor’s shoes on the pink carpet. When we overhear the trick tell Mack that on his way over tonight he saw eight cop cars outside the Exchange Club, one of the three casino hotels in town, Wanda looks shaken. Mack sits on the couch, ankle crossed over his knee, wooing the man in his warm, unforced voice, telling him what a fine selection of ladies he has to choose from, how this place is different from other brothels: The others will rush you, the others are just in it for the money, the others aren’t Christian, but here there’s free pop and free coffee and seventy-seven acres to take a moonlight stroll or take a girl for a skinny-dip in the natural spring-fed pool. Hell, one former girl, Jennifer—“she had these great big natural titties”—ended up marrying a trick; that’s right, dreams do come true. Hell, Mack had the honor of giving her away at the chapel in Reno, and after you’ve gruntled yourself with sex every which way you ever wanted, if you’re hungry, why, feel free to join us for supper, there’s still some on the table now.
During the lineup, Wanda clears dishes and I flick crumbs, lulled by the mechanical sips of Clint’s oxygen. Wanda joins me with a cup of tea. She wears green satin pajamas. She is not a glamorous or gaudy madam. The Townses went to the Beatty Community Church until the pastor, Reverend Jeff Taguchi—also the owner of the one-hour Photostop and, ironically, a county commissioner on the brothel licensing board—exhorted the couple one Sunday after their arrests to “go forth and sin no more.” Wanda holds her husband’s hand on the table. She is terrified that Clint, who’s dying of the same thing that Shanda claims is taking the kittens, could go to jail. They’re holding their breath till the trial; it’s been postponed twice already. She never sent a girl on an outcall before that night, she says. They only did it because the detective lied and said he was in a wheelchair. Her son, actually both her children, are wheelchair bound. She gets up and brings me a picture: a kid with long greasy hair, in a wheelchair. Diane enters the room, naked but for a black gauzy body stocking that smooshes her nipples. She drops $600 on the table and says the guy wants two and a half hours. While Wanda “books” the cash, Diane tells me that if I want, later, she’ll let me read a chapter from her book. Then Wanda sets a timer, and Diane leaves.
After a trick chooses which girl he wants from the lineup, the price negotiation is done privately in the girl’s room. (Each girl’s room is supposed to have a panic button.) Wanda listens in over an intercom hidden in the spice cabinet. Each woman is an independent contractor who sets her own price, generally $200 to $400 an hour; 45 percent goes to the house. Each sex act is negotiated and priced separately—done piecework, a la carte. Or, as Lora Shaner, a former madam, puts it in her book, Madam: Chronicles of a Nevada Cathouse, “You want to play with my tits? That’s an extra fifty. Suck my nipples? Seventy-five more. Nibble my toes? Forty bucks ….” Funeral expenses, as mandated by the Federal Trade Commission funeral rule, are similarly itemized.
Mack has given me a key to the Fantasy Bungalow, a dismal trailer set a hundred yards behind the main compound. Mack accused his last madam of burning down the first Fantasy Bungalow. Its charred remains are scattered at the bottom of the hill. The one where I get to sleep is perched on cement blocks, snuggled against a steep crag that bears a giant white A, like an aleph of shame. To get there I rely largely on instinct, stepping over cats tensed like fists in the dark. A few stars make an effort in the sky.
The decor of the Fantasy Bungalow is meant to be homey, as the Angel’s Ladies website put it recently, for “playing house or something different!” Angel oversaw the decorating, just as she did for their Oregon funeral parlors. The curtains are quaint and the wallpaper quainter. Mirrors in the bungalow apprise me of my whereabouts at all time
s, including one that surely registers my expression when I open the refrigerator and find, alone on the second shelf, a jumbo-sized box of chilled latex gloves. The video library is sparse: Hung and Hard, Bang’Er 17 Times, and SEASLUTS, Volume 2. In the back, past a beaded curtain, is my bedroom, furnished with more mirrors, and a vanity, where I leave my car keys by a Virgen de Guadalupe candle with a hornet entombed in the wax. Two lurid lamps with red bulbs clinch the mood. I try to call my wife, but I’m beyond cellular range. Mindful of a story that Shaner tells about a moll who once forced a trick to his knees at knifepoint to persuade him to accept Jesus as his personal savior, I look everywhere but find no panic button, only an unplugged Radio Shack intercom, and beneath the nightstand a five-quart stainless-steel bowl with a dozen Liquid Tight Hygienic Disposal System Safe-T-Bags. To my dismay, the smoke detector is missing its battery.
I pick up Bang’Er 17 Times, left in the VCR, in medias res, while I fix myself a cup of Lemon Zinger from the complimentary tea sampler. The actors look lonely and bored, insincere, like the professional mourners in Greece who wail and writhe and tear out their hair for a fee; it’s easy to sift out the truly bereaved from the faker, like pointing out the professional laugher in the studio audience, just as it’s easy to tell that this porn actress is only miming lust. There is no precipice behind her eyes; she is too sober, she looks up at the camera, her audience, hungry only for ratings; she is a busker, a drone. Although the video is a bit proctologic for my tastes, I watch while listening to snippets of tape of Mack in the car.